site.btaBulgaria's Electricity System Operator Joins European Balancing Energy Platform

The Electricity System Operator (ESO) successfully joined the PICASSO Platform and became the first electricity transmission operator in Southeast Europe connected to the European balancing platform, the ESO said Monday.

The European platform focuses on cross-border exchange of balancing energy from activated Automatic Secondary Frequency Regulation (aFRR) reserves. The international PICASSO project involves 26 TSOs, part of the European Association of Transmission System Operators ENTSO-e.

The PICASSO platform provides common rules for the activation of balancing energy from automatic secondary frequency regulation and exchange capacity for all connected TSOs. One of the key changes that will occur after joining the platform is the method of balancing energy pricing when activating the automatic secondary frequency and exchange capacity regulation (aFRR) service. The platform will collect and rank all available balancing energy offers from aFRR according to the offered price and a common priority list (CMOL) will be produced. The operation of the European balancing platform optimizes, within the framework of cross-border exchanges, the activation of balancing energy between the individual control units in the synchronous area of Continental Europe, taking into account the available transmission capacities, the ESO noted.

Bulgaria's electricity system operator is the first in the Southeastern Europe to join PICASSO and currently does not share an electricity border with transmission system operators effectively participating in the project. Until at least one TSO from Bulgaria's neighbouring countries joins the platform, there will be no real exchange of balancing power from automatic secondary frequency regulation (aFRR). For this objective reason, the formation of the marginal price for Bulgaria used as a pricing factor in the Balancing Energy Pricing Methodology will continue to be determined by the activated local sources of balancing services.

The ESOs' accession to the European balancing platform PICASSO is a key step in the process of building a sustainable and efficient single European energy market, the ESO further noted.